‘The Future Is Not Predetermined—We Shape It with the Decisions We Make Today’

Anastasia Likhacheva

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The strategic technological project ‘National Centre of Science, Technology, and Socio-Economic Foresight’ at HSE University spans horizons of 10 to 30 years and involves developing new methodologies of scenario analysis. It brings together researchers from different fields and helps to form a holistic vision of the future. The aim of the project is not only to produce forecasts but also to generate practical recommendations for government and business. Anastasia Likhacheva, Dean of the HSE Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, explains why it is important to learn to ask the right questions about the future.

— Your faculty is a key participant in the strategic technological project ‘National Centre of Science, Technology, and Socio-Economic Foresight.’ What applied tasks does your division address as part of such a global HSE project, and what added value does your faculty gain from taking part?

— For us, there are several positive externalities. In our field, the global economy is undergoing a structural transformation of a scale unseen in the past 30 years—and in some areas, even longer. This is now a widely recognised fact.

It is our professional responsibility to study and assess where these changes will lead and what effects they may have for our country. Of course, in certain areas we are in the very thick of events—for example, military and geopolitical issues—while in others we are, like everyone else, trying to work out how high technology, the global labour market, or international logistics will evolve. Given the size of our country, these issues are particularly relevant for us.

That is why the topics we develop within the strategic project run across all of our faculty’s educational programmes and research centres. Ultimately, this will give us a structured way of answering the question of what, in fact, awaits us—which is not at all straightforward in our field.

— The scenario forecast for the development of the Russian economy covers a whole decade up to 2036. Isn’t a 10-year forecast an overly ambitious target?

— The past three years have taught us that brushing aside forecasting with claims that the planning horizon has shrunk to 15 minutes may be acceptable at best on an individual level, but it certainly does not ensure success when managing larger systems. And in some fields, ten years is actually a short time frame.

Fundamental infrastructural and technological processes require long-term planning of 10 years and more. At the same time, processes related to food security can show their first results in just a few years. Digital services, too, are transforming very rapidly—sometimes in six months or a year—and within three years, a revolution can take place.

So, if you build a relevant forecast for the structural transformation of a couple of economic sectors, then ten years is a perfectly adequate timeframe.

Here is a more tangible example. When we talk about the education system, today we are deciding what needs to be reconfigured in school education, but our first graduates will only appear in ten years’ time. How can you operate with shorter horizons in this case?

That is why I hope that our strategic project will gradually expand into individual areas with even longer planning horizons. Even if we are mistaken, at least we will be training ourselves to ask the right questions about the future—which is a very important skill in itself.

— An important part of the strategic project is the creation of new forecasting methods. What new approaches or tools are you developing?

— We are systematically developing the methodology of situational analyses originally proposed by Academician Yevgeny Primakov. I would stress that this is an old Soviet development, and we make no claim to authorship. But it must be acknowledged that it is an incredibly effective tool for structuring a rigorous brainstorming process.

In recent years, when it has often seemed that nothing at all can be predicted, this tool has proved its worth. It delivers a very high degree of predictive accuracy and significantly improves the quality of expert discussion.

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In our work, we use a refined methodology of situational analysis. The academic supervisor of our faculty, Sergey Karaganov, has for several years been developing an alternative, advanced methodology of situational analyses based on texts rather than questionnaires, as in the approach of [Yevgeny] Primakov and [Mark] Khrustalev. The scenario group prepares the materials, and participants then work directly with the text.

If canonical situational analysis is primarily about gathering assessments and narrowing down the menu of possible future scenarios, our advanced methodology—developed and expanded by Sergey Karaganov—is much more focused on policy advice, on providing answers as to what decision-makers should actually do in a given situation. And this approach too has proved highly effective and is valued by both government bodies and experts.

It is not simply a brainstorming session—it is more like an intellectual juice extractor.

— Sanctions against Russia have long exceeded all conceivable limits—they were meant to crush the Russian economy and would almost certainly have crushed the economy of any other country. What, in your view, are the factors or regional features behind Russia’s ‘success’ in withstanding pressure from half the world?

— Well, first of all, I would honestly call it a success without quotation marks.

That does not mean sanctions have no negative consequences. I am not at all sympathetic to the triumphalist notion of ‘the more, the better for us.’

But it is a success. And it is something acknowledged both by unfriendly countries and friendly ones alike: ‘remarkably, you managed it.’

Nobody originally expected that events would unfold this way. I see two main components of this success: one external, the other internal.

The external factor lies in the fact that over the past 30–40 years the international system has been significantly transformed. A large number of countries and economies have grown that, first, represent sizeable markets in their own right and, second, have sufficient political agency not to be fully subject to outside pressure regarding sanctions. I tend to agree with the view that if the scale and intensity of the sanctions imposed on us since 2022 had been introduced, say, in 2000, there would have been no rational grounds to expect that we could have coped as well as we have.

By 2022, however, we had markets to redirect our foreign economic flows to, countries from which to source substitute goods, and transit states through which to organise intermediary operations. Twenty or thirty years earlier, China, India, and the countries of the Middle East simply did not have such capacity and freedom of manoeuvre.

So, the first reason for our success is the structure of the transformation of the international system—the very multipolarity so often talked about, which in practice worked to our advantage.

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The second reason is, of course, internal factors. Under heightened external pressure, internal conflicts tend to subside, while the managerial class works more effectively, energetically, and rapidly. Mobilisation of the managerial class—especially in business—did indeed occur.

The speed with which flows were redirected, intermediaries found, correspondent accounts opened, the tanker fleet launched, and so on and so forth—all this is evidence of a very high level of resilience within our professional business and governmental community when facing external pressure.

If we recall, Russian business developed through a succession of crises: first the crisis of the early 1990s, then the late 1990s, then 2008, and then 2014. So, in fact, most Russian companies never really had a period of relaxation—their internal mobilisation skills were well trained. And that certainly helped.

— So resilience has become an organic feature of Russian entrepreneurship?

— Yes, absolutely. In a sense, we have been witnessing this since 2022. In fact, the pandemic also served as a useful test drive for service sectors, where the reconfiguration of logistics chains was being worked through.

So that very resilience has manifested itself in full. This does not mean it can carry us forward for decades on its own. That is not the case. This resource, too, has its limits. But in a crisis moment, it proved itself worthy.

— And what is happening to the global economy now? What are the consequences when the leading economic powers ‘cancel’ a country—and it does not get cancelled?

— The global economy as we knew it—in which only a handful of countries sat at the top of the food chain—will most likely no longer exist. It will disappear both because of the shifting balance (or imbalance) of economic power and because of demographic transformation.

When six and a half billion people represent new markets, new centres of power, and, indeed, new ambitions for success, transformation becomes inevitable one way or another

And the fact that we stand on the threshold of a world that is not yet fully understood—that too is a fact.

I think that anyone who claims in detail to know what everything will look like in ten years’ time is either being disingenuous or not very clever. In our strategic project, for instance, we present forks in the road, rather than asserting how exactly things will turn out.

In general, what is happening to the global economy is difficult to describe in familiar terms. The world economy is not yet able to shift into another aggregate state, to arrive at some new equilibrium.

The capitalist model is failing to resolve global challenges and is increasingly unable to help countries address their structural socio-economic problems—for example, the middle-income trap or rising inequality.

The least developed countries are still showing growth, but for the past five years they have ceased to develop. They lack any contribution from total factor productivity to growth. In other words, give them ten more hoes, they plough ten more acres of land—but it is still hoe-based ploughing.

That is the first part of the problem.

The second part is that the economy lacks the resources to make such a transition. I think that the issue of global debt—which this year has exceeded 100 trillion dollars—is the elephant in the room. It is rarely spoken about, yet it is a powerful factor that will either hold back a shift to a new quality of growth, or else demand what humanity has usually done in such situations. As we know, the most ‘elegant’ way to say ‘I forgive all debts’ is war. War, unfortunately, has always been the most effective way of writing off debts. So far, humanity has not invented other elegant ways of refusing to repay 100 trillion dollars while remaining within the same framework.

I very much hope that one will be found, but for now, there has been little progress in this direction.

As a result, those who need money most find it hardest to obtain.

So we have a kind of stalemate, or zugzwang. Growth exists, but development is distributed in a very undemocratic way, because there are simply no free financial resources to change this situation.

Yes, it is still possible to print more debt for a while. Some countries will pay it off honestly, others will slip into minor defaults—as in Sri Lanka or Madagascar. But as for the bigger picture—how the world’s eight billion people will develop and transition to a new economic order—there is no answer to that question yet.

— Within the next ten years, will the issue of external debt among economic leaders be resolved, or, in your view, will it continue to accumulate—to 150 trillion, then 200 trillion?

— There is still room to multiply debt further. The first repayment peaks will come in 2026–2028. The financial–accounting shell game will continue for some time yet. The question is: will accumulated debt make war unavoidable within the next decade? No. Will it be a factor increasing the risk of armed conflict? Yes.

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— Could the ambiguous impact of sanctions on the Russian economy have been predicted before they were introduced? Or did it come as a complete surprise to all involved?

— It could have been anticipated, because even Iran, which for the past 30 years has been subjected to very heavy sanctions and suffered a major downturn, nevertheless withstood them. The regime did not change, and there was no mass famine. So the idea that Russia would endure was foreseeable—but everyone was still surprised.

First, the intensity of sanctions was different: they were not introduced gradually over 40 years, but within months. That was a very significant factor.

Second, the Russian economy is far larger than Iran’s, and our involvement in global—and especially regional—food and energy security chains is substantial. Much greater, indeed, than Iran’s.

This too was a very important factor of uncertainty: what would actually happen?

For us, it turned out to be a factor of opportunity, as we found alternative buyers and alternative suppliers.

The fact that any sanctions campaign tends to generate bypass schemes and intermediary countries was already known from the Cold War.

In fact, the main so-called ‘cheater countries’ that helped circumvent the US sanctions regime against the USSR were Japan and West Germany. On the one hand, they had access to critical technologies and goods; on the other, they were perfectly willing—with the help of trained specialists—to conduct intermediary operations.

But the scale and intensity this time, of course, posed a colossal challenge.

— Of the scenarios you are developing within the strategic project, which seems to you the most desirable, and which the most realistic?

— I am very much drawn to the philosophy of dynamic scenarios. Whichever scenario you take, we are now at point zero within it. There is no need to fantasise here—we are describing the current state. And the key question, in my view, from the perspective of scenario forecasting, is how long we will be able to remain within a given scenario, or whether we will reach the end point by other paths.

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Our approach does not aim to predict a single outcome but to work through several scenarios with different equilibrium points.

The first option is a transition to a new world order through a series of conflicts and redrawing of spheres of influence. This is a bleak but, unfortunately, quite realistic scenario, one with historical precedents.

The second option is a smoother transformation through negotiations and mutual concessions. But this would require an unprecedented level of trust and cooperation between states, which we do not currently see.

The third option is a kind of stagnation, in which the international community will be unable either to agree on new rules of the game or to resolve contradictions by force. In this case, we would face a prolonged period of instability and local crises.

Particular hope lies with the countries of the Global South, most of which have no interest in global conflicts and are focused on economic development. They could be the ones who become a stabilising factor in world politics.

— Beyond scenario development, what questions are you currently working on within the strategic technological project?

— One of the key areas is extending planning horizons. We are beginning to test forecasting 20–30 years ahead, especially in such fields as demography, education, and infrastructure. This is a difficult task, but without such a long-term vision, it is impossible to take strategic decisions today.

Another important aspect is bringing into the project specialists from a wide range of fields—not only economists and political scientists but also, for example, ecologists, teachers, forestry experts, and nuclear energy specialists. People accustomed to thinking in long time cycles. Their experience is invaluable for forming a comprehensive vision of the future.

We also devote special attention to the methodology of working with experts. We try to avoid information bubbles, in which a project becomes a closed system with a single opinion on every issue. On the contrary, we deliberately involve specialists with differing—sometimes opposing—views. Only in this way can we gain a truly multidimensional picture of possible futures.

I would stress that the topic of strategic forecasting is more relevant today than ever. And the most important thing is to remember that the future is not predetermined but is shaped by the decisions we make today.

The strategic technological project ‘National Centre of Science, Technology, and Socio-Economic Foresight’ is being implemented as part of the HSE University Development Programme for 2025–2036, which won the Priority 2030 strategic academic leadership competition within the framework of the Russian national project ‘Youth and Children.’